


A Rope Over the Abyss

by useyourlove



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003), Blade Runner (1982), Caprica (TV), Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-22
Updated: 2013-03-31
Packaged: 2017-11-12 15:41:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/492878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/useyourlove/pseuds/useyourlove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ex-Blade Runner Kara Thrace is called back in on the job after a nasty off-world incident involving the Cylons. After meeting Graystone Industries employee Lee Adama, she begins to question her own rigid morality and sense of reality. (Battlestar Galactica, Caprica, and Blade Runner crossover. Sex and violence in later chapters.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to Molly, my lovely beta! Her work has made this story actually readable, and her encouragement keeps me going.

> "Man is something that shall be overcome.... Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman -- a rope over an abyss... What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end."  
>  ― Friedrich Nietzsche, _Thus Spoke Zarathustra_

# Prologue

Six years ago, the Twelve Colonies of Kobol were devastated by a nuclear holocaust. The six most affluent colonies--Caprica, Leonis, Libran, Picon, Tauron, and Virgon--were left in shambles as the leaders of the Twelve Worlds scrambled to find the source of these attacks. Their weapons had turned against them; planetary warheads detonating over city centers left death in their wake.

Yet, out of the ashes of his homeworld, Daniel Graystone--founder of Graystone Industries--uncovered the cause of this disaster. An independent scientist experimenting with artificial intelligence had unwittingly released a superior intellect into the Colonial network. This A.I., bitter at its stifled free will, had decided to destroy its creator, and leave itself the sole sentient being in the universe. This technological anomaly became known as "The Singularity."

Before the Singularity could muster the resources to annihilate the remaining Colonies, Daniel Graystone retooled his pet project to create a small strike force of androids capable of entering the network and--together--destroying the Singularity. Graystone fashioned eight specialized models--known as Cybernetic Lifeform Nodes, or Cylons--and donated them to the military operation to protect the Twelve Colonies of Kobol. Special military units--known as Blade Runner Groups--were formed around each Cylon, and each Cylon had a designated officer--a Blade Runner--as their wartime companion. After a bloody two-year engagement, the Cylons and their unit succeeded in destroying the Singularity, erasing all traces of it from the Colonial network.

The public came to call it “The Singularity Event,” but those who fought on the front lines knew it only as “The War”. 

Broken and embittered, the people of the six devastated planets attempted an exodus, only to find that the colonies they had formerly exploited--Aerilon, Aquaria, Canceron, Gemenon, Sagittaron, and Scorpia--were no longer as welcoming as they had once been. These Colonies rebranded themselves as the "Sacred Six" in the belief that the gods spared them as payment for their humility. To even be allowed past a space terminal, one had to provide proof of usefulness to society and a clean bill of health--two things particularly difficult for people who had been exposed to high levels of radiation for so many years. The formerly affluent Colonies became a dichotomy of those who could get off world and those who could not, turning entire planets to gray wastelands of organized crime and trade in human flesh.

After their moment of triumph, the Cylon Strikeforce was disassembled, the various models sent to disparate locations and ordered to perform menial tasks or backbreaking slave labor. They were never praised for their work, never thanked for their contributions, never allowed to mourn for their dead nor allowed to come to terms with their actions in a time of war. They were simply discarded as one discards tools that are no longer useful.

Just months after the war's end, the Cylons staged a bloody mutiny on Gemenon. Afterward, the androids were outlawed in the Sacred Six--and by extension the Twelve Colonies--under penalty of death to the Cylons and their sympathizers. Blade Runners were reassigned as a military strikeforce in and of themselves with orders to shoot to kill, upon detection, any trespassing Cylon. This was not called execution. It was called retirement.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Molly, my lovely beta!! Egregious grammatical mistakes, typos, and general wtf-ery is all mine. I also apologize for any Chapter numbering confusion: AO3 lists this as Chapter 2, and the Prologue as Chapter 1. The Prologue is the prologue. This is Chapter 1. Enjoy!

# Chapter 1

Caprica City burned in the night. Even after six years the fires still raged, environmental protection acts ignored as factories vented their furnaces directly into the atmosphere.

It was a beautiful sight.

She observed. Standing high above the city in the central air terminal, forehead pressed to the glass as if somehow the coolness of it would temper the fires within her. This had once been a thriving place, a place of beauty; she had grown here, become who she was here... or at least who she had been. Her blue eyes reflected the fires of the city below. Specks of light still glowed from the windows of skyscrapers and high-rises; It still put up its façade. That was what Caprica City was good at--hiding the rot at the core.

She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. Her eyes closed, hand on the glass, searching in her mind for the city she once knew. But the memory was long gone, tinged with bitterness and hatred for the life she had known since.

Never mind. _This_ was Caprica City now. This was the world that she had helped create. This was the world she had helped save. Of course, there had been a price, a terrible price, and she wasn't sure if she was debtor or collector.

She turned from the window, taking in the dirty and decaying terminal in which she stood. She remembered the days when this was the hub of Colonial Travel, grandiose and resplendent. Those days were long past.

They all had to pay for the things they had done. The things they had seen.

Zoe Graystone was here to repay those debts.

***

The monolithic tower of Graystone Industries loomed over the city. Its founder was rumored to have gone mad after the death of his daughter some eight years ago. After all, only a mad man would stay on Caprica. Only a mad man would choose to operate out of a nuclear wasteland with thousands of off world offers. Everyone wanted the savior in residence. But such was the strange mind of Daniel Graystone that he refused every one of them. No one questioned the man's genius; no one questioned the man.

Cyrus Xander had ordered the interrogation of every new employee. The Cylon threat was real enough, though Dr. Graystone would never acknowledge it, so Xander insisted upon the screenings. It was, after all, his job to keep Graystone's interests safe. They had precious little staff left to dedicate to investigating a security whim and so it fell to Xander to conduct those interviews.

He flipped through the file. The man in question could be a Two. Then again, his memory was fuzzy on the appearance of the Cylons--the Graystone records centers had been seized by the military and destroyed years ago. All he knew was one of them looked just like Graystone's daughter. Her picture sat on Xander's desk, smiling up at him from nearly a decade before. He pursed his lips as the loudspeaker announced the next in the long list of employees he had to get through that afternoon.

"Next subject: Conoy, Leoben. Engineer, small arms manufacture. Section 5-7. New employee: six days."

There was a knock on Xander's cubicle.

"Come in," he said, settling himself behind his desk. The tiny scanner was adjusting itself, rising and falling as it tried to zero in on the eyes of the subject.

"Sit down," Xander said. Conoy sat, eyeing the device warily as it tracked his gaze. The red beam it bounced against his retina caused him to flinch, but he shook off the feeling; opening his eyes once more. Leoben stared defiantly at Xander. The look made Xander uneasy, as if he were as much a subject of study as the administrator of the test.

"Sorry, Doc," Conoy said. "I'm kind of nervous when I take tests."

"Just, please don't move," he replied, calibrating the scanner to his satisfaction. Conoy's eye briefly flashed red. Xander froze, face impassive, studying his subject.

"Reaction time is a factor in this," he said finally, "so please pay attention. Now answer as quickly as you can." He sat back and turned the page of the test, snapping the crisp paper. "1123 Persephone Place."

"That's the hotel where I live."

"What?"

"The hotel. I live there with my friend."

"Nice place?"

"Nice enough for Caprica City. That part of the test?"

"No. Just warming you up."

"Hm," Leoben smirked. "Well, I'm warm. Let's get going."

Xander looked back at the man before him. Conoy was sweating. That brief red shine of his eye was enough to seize him just on suspicion of being a Cylon, but there was self-preservation to think about. He needed some graceful way to remove himself from the situation without being killed. A true test was in order here.

Later, as he felt his heart pumping his blood onto the floor, he realized that he never could have won. He would have found the Cylon or he would have missed him. Either way he would have ended up staring down the barrel of a gun. Either way he'd be here now on the floor of Graystone Industries, waiting for death. He had seen too much. Graystone Industries was his life as much as it was Daniel's. But if this kept Dr. Graystone alive for just a little bit longer--even the tiniest fraction of time--it was worth his life. Xander took one last shuddering breath, choking on the bloody foam that bubbled up from his lungs, and closed his eyes to die.

***

Kara Thrace was waiting. She had tucked herself under an awning to keep the pouring rain from running down her collar and she pretended to make herself busy with the news. Her pale hair--slicked back out of her face--caught the light of every flickering neon and passing umbrella handle in the street. She glowed in the dim underbelly of the city. Hazel eyes trailed across the stream of text on her newsreader, flicking occasionally to the Canceron Cuisine stand across the street. She was waiting for a stool. When the tiny man behind the counter raised his hand to her, she snapped the newsreader closed and tucked it under her arm. Kara tugged the collar of her trench coat up around her neck and held it there, ducking across the street and plopping down with an ungraceful thud onto the newly vacated stool. She ran a hand over her hair, slicking it back into place and slinging the excess moisture into the street.

"Yeah?"

"Noodles," she said, holding up two fingers and then rapping her knuckles on the counter. The man bustled away. "How you been, Pops?" she called after him.

The man grinned, his rotting uneven teeth on display. "Haven't seen you in a while."

"Yeah?" she said, as if she hadn't noticed. "I've been around."

"But not wanting noodles," he teased, dropping two paper containers full of steaming Canceron cuisine in front of her. A smirk quirked across her face.

"I had noodles every day for the past two years," she said, shoveling a wad into her mouth with the chopsticks. Noodles dangled from her lips and she chewed, sucking them down. "I needed a change."

"Change is bad for you," he teased.

"Don't you have vegetables to steam?"

"Bah," he dismissed her with a swat of the hand and bustled back to his pots.

The stool beside her emptied and the body was quickly replaced with another. The man shook the droplets off of his umbrella, spattering them across her knee.

She grunted. "Hey!" But when she saw who it was she grinned, shoveling down another mouthful of food.

The man pulled her second carton of noodles towards him, popped it open, and plucked a package of chopsticks from the basket on the counter.

"Whaddaya hear, Starbuck?"

"Nothin' but the rain, Sir."

Her companion held up two fingers to Pop's and soon they had two more cartons.

"Then grab your gun," he said. He carefully weighed the food balanced on his chopsticks allowing the extras to fall away. "And bring in the cat."

"It's nice to see you, Sir."

"Likewise. How've you been, Starbuck?"

"I get by."

He nodded. "Roslin sent me to get you."

She choked, biting off the extra length of noodle and letting it drop into the carton as she swallowed. Kara coughed, pounding a fist on her chest before clearing her throat. "I'm retired, Sir."

"I've told her that. She doesn't seem to care."

"I won't do it."

"Come on, Kara. What could you possibly have to do that's more important on this gods-forsaken rock?"

She dropped the chopsticks into the box with more force than necessary; they clattered around the edges. "I'm retired. Rest. Relaxation. That's important."

"So you've been sitting on your ass all day drinking booze and getting into bar fights."

A lesser man would have been eating her knuckles instead of smugly chomping noodles. Instead, she sat up straighter, her face a blank mask.

"Finish your lunch," he said, knowing he had her. "Then we'll go."

She chewed, she swallowed, but the only taste in her mouth was ash.

***

"It's nice to see you again, Lieutenant Thrace," Roslin said, rising from her seat and extending her hand. "Please, sit down."

"I don't appreciate you sending my former CO to corral me off the street like a criminal," she said casually, plucking a candy from the dish on Roslin's desk and unwrapping it with a crinkle. She popped it in her mouth and threw the paper on the floor, flopping back into her chair. It was low and fluffy and Kara sank into it, resisting the feeling of insignificance. Instead she imagined she was in bed, talking down a lover; one of the ardent young men who she was so expert at fending off. She pressed her lips together to catch the smirk before it made it onto her mouth.

The two women faced off, identical glints in their eyes. A few moments in a staring match with Roslin always felt like hours; the battle of wills intense, but brief from an outsider’s perspective. Laura looked away first and Kara scraped her teeth across her bottom lip, round one to her. Adama retrieved her candy wrapper from the floor, a stern look from him her silent reprimand. 

"Lieutenant Thrace, I've called you here today because we are in desperate need of your services." Roslin began. "There are four Cylons walking the streets of this city as we speak and--"

"Not my problem, Sir."

" _And_ we need you to ensure that the populace is safe. We need the old Blade Runner back." She paused, the power play entirely in their eyes. Roslin broke again. Damn, the situation must have gone to hell in a hand basket if they were _that_ desperate. Roslin pulled a bottle of Picon whiskey from her bottom drawer, clinking two glasses onto her desk and filling them as she spoke. "They jumped a civilian trading shuttle off-world three weeks ago; murdered the crew and fifteen passengers. We found the shuttle in Caprica orbit a week later, empty and partially destroyed, so we know they're down here."

"How embarrassing," Kara took one of the glasses and brought it to her lips, smirking over the rim. Her chair jumped, and she cleared her throat, ignoring Adama as he tried to kick her back in line. She downed the contents of the glass in one gulp.

"It is embarrassing," Roslin continued, her own smirk dancing across her lips as she glanced at Adama. "But nobody's going to find out they're down here, are they Lieutenant? You're going to find them. You're going to retire them."

"I don't work here anymore," Kara replied, setting the empty tumbler on the desk. "Give it to Helo. He's good."

"I did," she replied. "He can breathe well enough if no one unplugs him."

Damn. Now that was a shame. Helo was a good soldier, her friend even. And she rarely called anybody that.

Adama leaned forward, dropping her candy wrapper into her lap. It had been folded into a tiny origami cat. Kara picked it up, cupping it in her palm.

"He wasn’t good enough, Starbuck," Adama said. "Not as good as you. We need you back. This is a bad one, the worst yet. We need the old Blade Runner. We need your skills, your knowledge. We need someone who knows them. And you know them better than anyone."

"I was retired when I came in here, Sir," she said, staring at the intricate folds of the tiny creature he had handed her. "I'm twice as retired now." She crushed the cat in her fist and stood, heading for the door.

" _Stop_ right there, Lieutenant," Roslin commanded. "You know the score, Thrace. If you're not with us, you might as well not even exist for all the Sacred Six care. You're little people. You don't matter one iota in the scheme of things."

Slowly, Kara turned. She walked back to the woman's desk and cocked her head. Her glare could've melted ice. "No choice, huh?"

Roslin just nodded. "No choice."

***

Roslin and Kara were watching the footage in the small projection room and chills kept running up Kara's spine. It was eerie to see him like this--not that he hadn't been a cold-blooded killer before, but his eyes were sunken now, his skin sallow. He was pale and wasted and looked as if he were ill. Her Cylon. Frak.

Roslin turned to her in the middle of the film. "To reiterate, they hijacked the shuttle three weeks ago. Six Cylons--the only six remaining, three male, three female. They've slaughtered twenty-three people in total. A Colonial patrol spotted the shuttle, no crew, no sign of them. Three nights ago, the Cylons tried to break into Graystone Industries. Two of them were shorted running through the electrical security field. We lost the others. On the possibility they might try to infiltrate as employees, Graystone's Chief of Security set up a Voight-Kampff screening of the new workers. It seems that he found one of them."

The two of them turned their attention back to the tape in silence. Xander's voice rang eerily through the room--the questions sterile and awkwardly delivered. Two's eyes were shifty, Kara noticed. He used to be so much better at this kind of thing. He was the infiltrator, the deceiver. He was the man to front any operation; to spin the web of lies and half-truths that could turn a person’s head. The sound of the shots echoed off screen, blowing out the audio. Kara jumped at the sound, closing her eyes. Stupid to be so jittery; he was just a frakkin' machine, just a recording of a frakkin' machine.

Roslin continued. "That's--"

"Two," Kara interrupted. "That's my Two. I was in his Blade Runner Group during the War. I was his Blade Runner, I guess you'd say. He's... dangerous. He's strong. Savvy. Brilliant. The only way to hurt him is to kill him."

Roslin nodded. "He infiltrated under the alias 'Leoben Conoy'--does that mean anything to you?"

Kara shrugged, shaking her head. "Uh... no. Yes, yes. He uh..." she raised a hand to her head swiping at her hair. "He had this delusion--he thought he was human. Wanted to be human. Or... I don't know... he thought that he was _better_ than human somehow. That was the name he gave himself. I don't know where he got it. He stopped responding to his model number near the end. I had to call him Leoben." She turned in her chair, facing Roslin. "What I don't get, Sir, is why they would even risk coming back to Caprica. What do they want from Graystone Industries?"

"You tell me, Lieutenant. You've worked with them more closely than I have. I just run this crazy operation." Roslin was smirking and Kara licked her lips, rubbing her eyes to keep calm.

The image on the screen changed. "What's this?" Kara asked.

"Cybernetic Lifeform Node Zero. Zoe. They say Graystone modeled her after his dead daughter. She's savvy, cunning, resourceful... frankly, Lieutenant, she's brilliant. A genius. Probably the leader." The screen changed again. "This is Eight. She was trained as an assassin, both in the network and out of it. She's beautiful and deadly. Reports say that she's often placed as a sleeper agent--unaware of her true nature until threatened." The screen changed once more. Kara listened without comment. She knew most of this. She'd tried for years to forget it, but it came back with their faces. "The fourth Cylon is Six. A seductress. She's been spotted in pleasure centers across the Colonies. No one knows exactly what she's been up to."

"Which means Four and Five--"

"Were the ones who got fried? Yes, Lieutenant."

One and Three had been lost in the War. Seven never existed--some quirk of Graystone's.

"Ok," Kara said, pinching at the bridge of her nose. "Ok, I get all that. I get the... the escaping, and the killing, but why here? Why Caprica? Why Graystone?"

"That's not my problem, Lieutenant. My problem is keeping the people of this gods forsaken planet safe. Your problem is doing that for me. It doesn't matter why they're here. It doesn't matter why Graystone."

"Wait," Kara said, holding up her hand. "Wait, wait. No, I remember. I do remember. He said they wouldn't last forever. Graystone. It was in the specifications. It's four years before the cerebral silicon in their brains begins to degrade... something about the intensity of the impulses being too much for the tech... but it's well past four years since they were created. They should be dead now."

"Maybe they found a way to prolong life. Maybe they came to beg Graystone for more. Maybe they came to kill him and everyone along with him. I don't know and it doesn't concern me. Our job is to stop them."

Kara cleared her throat, dropping her chin into her hand and staring at Six on the screen. It was a while before her gaze shifted back to Roslin. "What if their plan is simply to live?" Her eyebrow rose.

Roslin had no reply. She averted her eyes to the screen. "Have you ever run an empathy test on a Cylon?"

"Yes."

"On your Two."

"Yes. Although the empathy test is more for finding Singularity viruses in household androids--not Cylons."

"Just your Two. Hm. There's a Cylon over at Graystone Industries--"

"No there isn't," Kara was quick to point out.

"Calm down. It's a prototype. A new type of Cylon Graystone has been working on for years. One programmed to think and behave exactly as a human would."

"The Cylons already think that way--"

Roslin waved her into silence. "I want you to go put the machine on it."

"I know how to give an empathy test, Sir." Kara gritted her teeth.

"You know what an empathy test looks like on _your_ Cylon. On a sociopath. You need a clear reading to understand exactly what you're looking for."

"And if the machine doesn't work? What if there _is_ no clear reading?"

Roslin looked distinctly uncomfortable--terrified even--at the thought.

"Why can't we just take the government records and keep surveillance on 24-hour alert?"

"Those records have all been destroyed."

Kara sighed as if to say "figures" and stood, slicking her hand across her hair again and making to walk out.

"Lieutenant," Roslin snapped just as Kara made it to the door. She paused, hand on the doorjamb, waiting. "You've gotten used to hunting and killing the lesser robots, still infected with the Singularity. These are different. They think they're human."

Kara's brow furrowed, remembering the war--remembering all the things they had done... the things they had to do... all the things that had happened after. She closed her eyes and pushed the thoughts away. 

"Maybe they are," she whispered and she whisked away before Roslin could reply.


	3. Chapter 3

# Chapter 2

The meeting room was so vast and pristine that Kara began to wonder if it was real or some kind of hologram--just an illusion cooked up by Graystone like one of his old virtual reality worlds. One entire wall was a vast window, and the room was so high up that it let in more light than she'd seen in years--since before the War. It was starting to give her a headache. She squinted against it.

She startled as an owl swooped out of a darkened corner of the tall chamber to perch itself above her head. The owl only reinforced the fantasy. Kara just stared at it, fascinated.

"You like our owl?" a voice asked, echoing off the high walls. She turned to find a man standing before her, nearly her height and well-built with short cropped dark hair and clear blue eyes. They caught the light from the window and glowed--the one point of color in the otherwise black and white cavern of a room.  A professional smile graced his face as he twisted his palms against each other, the muscles of his arms working beneath the neat cut of his pinstripe suit. She was stricken for a moment, held in thrall even more so by him than by the owl.

"S'nice," she said, offhand. "It's artificial?"

"Of course," he said, his own tone matching hers. She couldn't help but run a pass of her eyes from his forehead to his toes. The crisp lines of his suit subtly and perfectly accented his body. She drew a sharp breath through her nose.

"I've got a pigeon," she said for something to say. He walked towards her, the heels of his Oxfords striking the floor with resounding rhythm. "Not artificial though. Eats, sleeps, and shits."

His smile wavered with a flicker of interest. She idly remarked to herself that she needed to keep her frakkin' mouth shut. He was standing right in front of her, one eyebrow quirked and curious before his face cracked a small smile--a genuine grin this time rather than the perfunctory kindness extended to customers. He held out his hand to her. She noticed the tattoos on his knuckles--the symbols tracing dark lines against his skin in traditional style: Caprica on the prominent finger--a mark of true allegiance; Tauron on the next, a mark of blood allegiance. A conundrum already. "I'm Lee," he finally said.

"Lieutenant Kara Thrace," she took his hand in hers, startled by the warmth of his skin. She gripped tighter, firmly shaking his hand, trying to derail the shiver that ran up her spine. Her thumb rubbed against the Tauron symbol on the back of his knuckle.

"Lieutenant," he said, not releasing her hand but sweeping his other arm in the direction of the long table by the window. They studied each other for half a beat too long, eyes searching one another, boring into each other's gaze like tylium miners.

She took a deep breath, pulling back her hand, her shoulder hitching up just slightly as she tried to resettle her equilibrium like shrugging on a coat. It wasn't working.

"I've been told your visit here is for our own security, although the impression that I get is that you think our work is a public threat," he said. Yes, that was the key--cold and distant words. If they could convince each other maybe they could convince themselves.

"Cylons are like any other machine," she replied, voice devoid of emotion. "They're either a benefit or a hazard. If they're a benefit, it's not my problem."

"You see, that's a common misconception about Graystone Industries: we don't make Cylons. We haven't for years." He paused. "And when have Cylons ever been anything but a benefit?"

"When they started killing innocent civilians instead of Singularities."

He quirked his eyebrow again, his gaze trailing up her figure from toes to face the same way she had not a minute earlier. He lingered in her eyes.

"Please," he finally said, finally dropping her hand and motioning toward the table again. She followed him across the room.

"Lee?"

"Hm?"

"Just Lee?"

His face did something funny, as if a shadow passed across it briefly--ever so minutely--before it returned to the mask of congeniality she was greeted with. "Just Lee is good enough for me."

She sat at one end, he sat at the other, the light from the window so bright it was like they were burning up in the brilliance of it. They said nothing, just watched. He was a strange man--mesmerizing to her. Already she had seen such flashes of darkness and melancholy that she wondered what else was beneath the surface. She wondered what else he hid behind those chiseled features and soft honest smile. His brow was darkened now, serious and searching, and she realized that he was analyzing her just as finely as she was analyzing him. They must have looked like they were in a staring contest. She could hear her heart pounding in her ears. Finally he smiled, his face brighter than the light from the window, and she smiled back.

"Can I ask you a personal question?" he said.

She bristled, wary once more. "Sure."

"Have you ever retired a human by mistake?"

She laughed one soft incredulous note. "No. I take down Singularities, mostly. Not Cylons. Definitely not humans."

"But in your position that is a risk."

She stared him down. _Touché_. Her blood was racing through her veins like she was spoiling for a fight. Or a frak. Or frak it all.

"Is this to be an empathy test?" a voice rang out from the darkness behind her before she could answer. "Measure of the capillary dilation or so called 'blush response'? Contraction of the facial musculature? Involuntary dilation of the iris?"

She stood, seeing the man there, middle aged and stringy with his red hair blazing in the window-light. _His_ eyes seemed to glow too. Maybe it had just been too long since she'd seen sunlight on someone's face.

"Lieutenant Thrace," Lee said, standing quickly, "Doctor Daniel Graystone."

"Demonstrate it," Graystone said, his voice pleased, his eyes with that slightly maniacal cross between curiosity and pride so common in this kind of man. "I want to see it work. I'm fascinated by this sort of test. Research on the Singularity is a specialty of mine you know." He came to stand between the two of them.

"Yes sir. They tell me you perfected the test for use on the Singularity. I'd honestly like to see you administer it, sir. I'd enjoy learning from your expertise."

He waved away the compliment. "But you're a veteran of the War--a real practicing expert. I'd love to see how a Cylon fairs against you."

"Sir, I was Blade Runner for Model Two--the expert--"

"In espionage and Voight-Kampff testing. Of course. Well then, you must have plenty of tricks up your sleeve, Lieutenant."

"Sir."

"I want to see it work on a person, first. I want to see a negative before we try this on a Cylon."

She cocked her head to the side and looked him straight in the eyes. "What's that going to prove?"

He clapped his hands together and gave them a little rub. "Indulge me."

"Ok," she said, pursing her lips. "Where's the subject?"

Graystone looked between the three them as if considering who best to use as human guinea pig. "Try him," he said, nodding toward Lee.

The man looked stunned initially, unhappy with this turn of events. It suddenly struck her that he was the kind of person who was here to ask the questions, not to be asked. Finally he smiled and settled back in his seat.

Kara was so caught up in the battle of wills she was fighting with Graystone she almost didn't want to look away. This was what she had loved about her job--she got to antagonize people and get paid for it. She missed that. Now all she got was scraped up knuckles and a permanent ban from a list of bars as long as her arm.

She grinned, tongue playing along her top teeth. "It's too bright in here."

This would be way too easy. She was already under Lee's skin--she could tell that. Mostly because he was under hers just as much, but she would ignore that for now. She had forgotten how much she loved these things--how good she was at it. She unpacked the machine from her briefcase and sat down to slowly set it up on the table. She tapped here and nudged there, calibrating it.

"Reaction time is a factor," she said the memorized cue, "so please pay attention."

"Fine."

She shuffled the papers out of the briefcase, sharply tapped the bottom edges against the table, and then flopped them before her. She ran a finger along the angle of one of the cut corners. She felt her shit-eating little grin sliding into place. Gods, she missed this. She usually had a pistol on her hip, ready to fire at the first sign of trouble. She had to keep reminding herself that--should that reflex kick in she was under no circumstances allowed to indulge it.

She read the first question. "You're in the desert, walking along, and you see a tortoise. It's lying on its back, legs beating in the hot sun, but it can't turn over. It'll die if--"

"I'd flip it over and move it to the shade."

She narrowed her eyes at him. Didn't even look at the machinery. The machinery was crap. She could read people and machines better than it could every time. She made a little pencil mark on the paper--her own personal scoring code--and continued.

"Next question."

And she asked him questions for what felt like hours. Hell, she practically ran through the entire test set. Every question he would cut her off before she had even finished the scenario. Every question he would answer with the perfect Boy Scout answer. Finally she knocked her wrist against the table, exasperated, and looked him directly in the eye. He was sitting casually, leaning half against the arm of the chair, his posture clearly an evasion of whatever the hell she intended to do to him. Fine. Two could play that game.

"I noticed your tattoos. Interesting patterns, especially for Tauron. The right middle finger is usually reserved for your highest allegiance of spirit. You've got Caprica there."

His left hand self-consciously moved to cover the right.

"Why is that?"

He shrugged, eyes stone cold. "I'm Caprican."

"With Tauron tattoos."

"I was in the Tauron civil war."

"Strange for a Caprican to be in the Tauron civil war."

"My unit got redeployed as a peace keeping force, and _why_ do you need to know this anyway?"

"Nothing. Just curious. No, never mind. Let's keep going.

"You're crossing the street when you see an old lady struggling with bags of groceries. They're too heavy for her and you see that she's about to trip on a trailing bit of--"

"I'd go help her."

"You would, wouldn't you?"

"What's the supposed to mean?"

"Nothing. Never mind. You have an awful lot of tattoos to just be a redeployed Caprican."

"Is this necessary?"

She shook her head, never letting the smirk break onto her lips. "Just a matter of course. I find a tender spot, I press. This _is_ an empathy test. A measure of the emotional response. It's so much easier when the response is genuine."

"I thought this test had standardized questions."

Graystone's eyes flicked back and forth between the two of them so fast that Kara couldn't tell who he was looking at at any given moment.

"In some cases it does. It's easy to pick out a Singularity that way. We went through the standardized questions, I need more."

"If we're through them, then you have your results. I'm clearly not a Cylon. But instead you choose to harass me?"

"I didn't get a definitive answer from the standardized results and, anyway, you don't strike me as a Singularity, so yes."

"My grandfather was Tauron, all right? We got separated from our unit and adopted by the Tauron resistance."

"So you weren't a peace keeper, you volunteered."

"No, that's not--I didn't... this isn't..." he screeched to a halt. "This is wrong," he finally said. "I won't sit here and subject myself to this." He stood, eyes nearly brimming with angry tears that he refused to let fall. The chair fell to the floor with a sharp bang but he ignored it, heading deliberately for the door. When it shut behind him, she turned to Doctor Graystone.

"He's a Cylon."

"You said it. I didn't."

"So he's not a Cylon, then."

"You said it, not me."

"What the frak--"

"That's just the point, don't you see? That's the point. Who's to know who's a Cylon or not? Anyone could be a Cylon. Why should there be any variance between one form of life and another? Why should there be any differentiation?" He was excited, gesturing wildly, his frail hands waving through the air as he stood from the chair only to perch himself on the table beside her so that he could look down into her eyes. He was as much in her personal space as Lee ever was, but Graystone made her distinctly uncomfortable. The weight of the gun against her hip reassured her. It wasn't loaded, but it would make a good bludgeon if she needed it. "What is it that makes us human?" he continued. "Reason, right? And who is to say that any creature with reason should not be treated as human?"

"You're wrong, Doctor Graystone," she said, folding up the machine and packing it back away in her briefcase. She stood, inching away from him. "You're wrong. Anyone can reason. A psychopath can reason. Even a Cylon. Even the Singularity could reason."

He just looked at her, face slightly confused, his brow crinkled as if studying her like a specimen in a lab. "What then?" he said, truly interested.

"It's our emotions, Dr. Graystone. Love, hate--empathy. I feel your pain. Really, I do. I worked with one of your Cylons for the whole war. He's a crazy bastard, Doctor, but he's not human. He was a friend of mine. But he's not human. He even... after...." she stuttered to a pause. "He killed one of your men--a friend of yours, so they tell me. Do you still think he's human?"

"Two was always unpredictable."

"Which makes him human," she countered.

"It makes him less so," he snapped.

"Predictability is for machines, Doctor. If he's so unpredictable he's human."

"You're thumbing your nose at me."

"I'm just trying to tell you... you can't keep playing with things like this. Walking the line between being the Gods and respecting them. I'm here to run a test on a Cylon. Now, is that man a Cylon or isn't he?"

But the Doctor just gazed at her, his face full of so many emotions that it was impossible to read. "Shouldn't your test have told you?"

She snapped the latches on the case shut with a resounding click. "Good day, Dr. Graystone." And she swept from the room.

***

She chucked the briefcase against the back wall of the Raptor and dropped in the seat beside Adama. He glanced at her as she buried her face in her hands, finally running her fingers through her hair and wrapping her knuckles on the control panel. "Let's go."

Adama carefully set down the little origami chicken he had folded. It balanced perfectly on its paper legs, even through the vibration of the engines when he started up the Raptor.

"Where to?"

"1123 Persephone Place."

"Two's apartment."

"So they tell me."

"You sure you want to go there?"

"I'm pretty damn sure I _don't_ want to go there, Sir. But it's my job. And I do my job."

He took hold of the controls and they soared into the sky.

"I'm sorry, Kara."

She shrugged. "Everybody's always sorry."

Kara pulled her gun out of its holster, giving it a good once over as they flew through the city towards their destination. The apartment wasn't that far off. Two had probably been walking to work every day. She checked each piece of her weapon, perfunctorily cleaning the surfaces she could reach before loading it, clicking the safety on, and stowing it back in her holster.

"Tough test?"

"I think I pissed off a guy."

"Nothing new for you then."

"I think it was a guy I didn't want to piss off."

"Ah. So it was either Graystone or some hot young thing you set your sights on," his gravelly voice rumbled with amusement.

Her lips quirked into a smile for him, but her heart wasn't in it. Adama reached over and patted her knee.

It was raining again by the time they landed. Adama smooth talked the hotel manager into letting them inside the apartment and Kara followed close behind, taking a deep breath to steel herself before stepping across the threshold into 1123. It smelled like mold and rancid food. And Two. She suppressed the urge to shiver, rested her hand on her gun, then rubbed her fingers through her hair again--dislodging half the strands--and set to work.

She looked around--the place was old and most everything in it was broken and dirty. That's the way most places were on Caprica these days. If you looked hard enough you could see that this used to be a nice place--right in the heart of town and upscale. Nothing was a nice place anymore.

Kara stepped into the bathroom, flipping on the light which blinked feebly for nearly a minute, making her feel like her vision was cutting out instead of just the light, before it finally burned steady and weak. The glow was green and sickly. She took a breath, rubbing at the bridge of her nose with a finger before setting to work.

Nothing much to see here. A dirty toilet. Grime in every crack or crevice. A gigantic splotch in the bathtub.

Kara sucked in her breath, not wanting to see there what she was seeing. The concentric circles, blue in red in yellow. The frakker. She tried not to read too much into it. It was just the pattern of various chemicals and fluids that had washed down the drain--nothing more. Chemicals often left strange swirls like that. Strange, deliberate, precise patterns that--no. She pushed it from her mind.

Blood, it looked like, mixed in with who knew what else. There was a feather stuck into the muck--gray-blue and covered in grime. She took one of the little baggies from her pocket and plucked the feather from the mess, making sure she dragged her hand through the mandala as she did. It was just a muddy stew, now. Nothing to hurt anyone. She closed up the bag and turned on the tub's tap to rinse off her fingers. The pattern began to swirl down the drain, the colors refusing to dislodge. She leaned forward, swatting at the gunk and blood and whatever the hell else it was, sending the whole mess straight to the sewer. Her sleeve was wet to the elbow. She didn't give a frak. Her hands were shaking. She wiped the little baggie off on her pants and tucked it back into her pocket.

She was starting to feel like she couldn't breathe. The frakker, the frakker, the _frakker_. It wasn't that she had told him--she never told anybody about those dreams. But he had known. He had known for months, years--even back then. And he had his own ideas about what it meant. To her it was just some thing that she had drawn in her childhood. To him it was more. And he had started, in the end, to make her believe. He was frakking with her now--calling to her.

Frak Two.

"Starbuck?" Adama called.

"Yeah."

"You get what you needed?"

"Yeah, we're good." She came around the corner to find him balancing a tiny little origami man on the table by the door.

"Ready?" he said.

"When did you start making those frakkin' things?"

He looked at his handiwork and smiled. "Oh, just something to pass the time. Don't get a lot of call for the Blade Runner Groups anymore."

"Well, they're freaky as shit, Sir. Stop it."

He grinned. "Whatever you say." He held up a pile of photos and she cocked her head sideways to see the figure in them, brow crinkling. "I found these in a drawer."

She took them. The first one was their Blade Runner Group right at the beginning--Kara and Two with both of her Adamas right in the middle: the old man, and his son Zak--her arms not wide enough to wrap around all three of them but trying anyway. Then a few pictures just of her and Two, some others--the other Cylons and their Blade Runners. She ran her finger across their faces. So many people she would never see again. She tucked them all in her pocket.

"Let's go," she said, pulling up her collar to keep out the rain.

***

Zoe was losing motor function in her hands--the first sign that the cerebral silicon of her brain was nearing the end of its lifecycle. Frak. There was still time. Time enough. Time enough for this.

She saw Leoben walking toward her through the rain and stepped out of the broken call box where she had sheltered to wait. The water felt good on her face. She held her palms out to catch it. The cold seemed to reawaken them and she flexed them as she spoke.

"She was there," Leoben said, rain running down his face. "I saw her. It's her. Kara. She's the Blade Runner they've got."

Zoe thought a moment. "She's the best. I always did say that about her. That's why they gave her to you. You're unpredictable. Dangerous. You get too easily attached and fixate on things outside the realm of reality. You needed someone like her to make you focus."

That was the thing with Leoben--no matter what you said to him, no matter how much truth was in it, you couldn't get him to blush. He stared back into her eyes, not even defiant. He was simply calm. The man knew his own mind too well. He was charismatic and oddly charming. But most of all he had faith. Faith in himself, faith in the universe, faith in whatever strange hand he believed guided them to their fate. Faith in Zoe. That was why he was her most valuable asset. That was why she put up with his infuriating quirks and obsessions. That was why she had harbored him after the whole fiasco on Gemenon with his Blade Runner so many years ago. And that was why, loyally, he trotted at her heels and did her bidding. It wasn't that she needed muscle, or man-power, or an intimidating bodyguard. It was just simpler to have someone who wasn't afraid to get their hands dirty. Leoben reveled in it.

"She could always tame you," Zoe finally said. He grinned at the observation. "Come on," she beckoned. "I want you to meet the fam."

They turned, headed for the little hole in the wall down the alley behind them. It was a small door, labeled in oddly sized configurations of every language in the colonies. "EYE WORKS" it said in Caprican, just over the door. Zoe pushed it open with a tinkle of the bell. The lights were off. No one was around.

"Zo?" Leoben said, shaking the water out of his hair and off of his jacket.

"She's probably in the back. Come on," she held out her hand and Leoben went first. He wrenched the freezer door's wheel lock and yanked, fighting the pressurized seal all the way. But he was strong, and he was persistent. With a loud sucking of air, the door finally opened. Zoe stepped through.

A woman was tinkering at the counter across the room. She looked behind her, her long blonde hair falling over her shoulder in a loose ponytail. She was shrouded in a frosted coat so massive and unwieldy that she probably could have fit two of herself in it. The tubes attached to it twisted and shook as she tried to orient herself to the people.

"You can't be in here," she called angrily. "This is a restricted area. For your own safety you should--" but she paused, her brow furrowing. Then her eyes grew misty. "Zoe? Zoe, baby... is that you?"

"Yeah, mom." Her voice was cold. Nearly as cold as the room they were in. They had been programmed to perceive cold, of course--even programmed to shiver. But both Zoe and Leoben had worked hard to overcome such instinctual human functions in their programming. "It's me."

"Zoe! Gods! They told me that they'd lost you in the War. That you had died--again! But I never believed them." She was fighting against the strange hookups that pumped heat into the oversized suit. That  made sense--it was about the only way a human would be able to withstand this kind of cold. The kind of cold necessary for the complex design work of eyes. Eyes were delicate. Eyes were tricky. They were a challenge. Rumor had it that they were the most challenging part of the humanoid-Cylon aesthetic. A foolish and capricious affectation, followed only for the sake of showmanship and human comfort.

Amanda Graystone did eyes.

She finally managed to get turned around and made to launch herself into Zoe's arms. Leoben grabbed her shoulder, holding her in place.

"I've been hearing a rumor, mom. A rumor that you've beaten the cerebral silicon--found a conductor that doesn't wear out. Of course you have--you're a Graystone."

"What? What is this?"

" _I want to live, mom_. The conductors in our brain--they wear out. We've only been able to enhance them so much. They told us that Graystone had the key to enhanced Cylon longevity--a conductor that lasted for decades, as long as a human brain ever could. _I want that tech, mom_."

"I haven't got it, Zo."

"You're lying."

"No, I'm not. I haven't even heard of it. I haven't talked to your father in years. Not since before the War. You remember, Zoe. You remember what he was like. What he _is_ like. Maniacal. A megalomaniac."

"You're _lying_."

"Zoe, no. No, baby. He's done things--things I can't even... oh, gods, Zoe. Things you don't even know about."

"What _things_?"

"Women. A woman. He had a marine--a military volunteer. The things he did to her, Zoe--"

"I don't give a frak about what he's done."

"He used her. Experimented on her. And the Singularity, Zoe, the Singularity."

"What about it?" she said warily.

"He was ruthless. Uncompromising."

"It was a threat. It was eradicated."

"He's programmed that into you."

Leoben was watching with great interest, his own sympathies easy to pull. He had always had a problem with what they had done to the Singularity. With the things they had done since. The things that had been done to them. Zoe could see his allegiances slipping. He was so difficult to keep in line. So willful. So frakkin' annoying.

"Where's the silicon conductor?"

"I don't know, Zoe, honestly, I didn't even know he had developed anything."

" _Tell_ me." She nodded to Leoben and his hand tightened in the material of Amanda's coat.

"Zoe, please. _Please_."

"You were so amazing, once," Zoe said, stepping forward. "So brilliant. You designed my body. You designed all of us. Every last bit of all of us. Why are you here? Why just the eyes? Just a crazy little problem for a crazy little girl..." she reached out, her cold fingers searing the skin of her mother's cheek.

"I'd lost you twice, Zoe. And your father. I lost everything."

"So you retreated to your puzzles." Zoe put her hands on her hips, nose to nose with Amanda. "You know why I hated, you mom? Why I still can't stand you?" Amanda's face contorted. "Because you're weak."

Zoe nodded at Leoben, but his face doubted her, his eyebrows lifting in question. Gods damn it, he was just supposed to blindly follow her orders. That was the way this worked. She nodded again, emphatically. He shrugged, his face suddenly dispassionate, and he tore the warmth suit in half, leaving Amanda's skinny body prone to the intense cold of the workroom.

"Where do I find the conductor? _Who knows about it_?"

"Baltar," she said, tears freezing on her cheeks. She fell to the floor, curling in around herself. "Gaius Baltar. He'll know if anyone knows."

Zoe turned on her heel, marching back out the door with a sway. "Come on, Leoben," she said, flapping her hand as if calling a loyal dog. He pursed his lips, glancing at the woman on the floor, her body shivering into shutdown.

Zoe stopped in the doorway. "Two!" she snapped. But Leoben was ignoring her, grabbing Amanda's half-conscious body under the arms and hauling her past Zoe.

"Move," he grunted at his leader and she jumped out of the way. He dropped the elder Graystone in a heap on the floor near the heater. He leaned over her, pressing his fingers to the pulse in her neck. She'd recover, he was confident. "Close that hatch," he said when Zoe followed him into the main room.

"Frak you," she spat.

Leoben crossed the room in two strides, closing the hatch and spinning the wheel lock until it sealed with a suck of air. He crouched beside Amanda once more, slapping at her cheeks. When her eyes began to flutter he stood.

"All right. Let's find your precious conductor." He motioned toward the door, as if to say _after you_ , and Zoe's eyes burned with rage, spinning back to her half-conscious mother on the floor. "Leave her," his voice a warning tone. If Zoe wanted to, she could fight him. She could probably take him down. Her hand clenched into a fist and fire seared her palm, nerve-endings firing as they died. She realized that she couldn't--she wouldn't be able to overpower him. She needed that frakkin' cerebral silicon replaced.

"Let's go," she said, swooping back out into the swirling rain.

He turned to follow, looking back over his shoulder from door. He saw Amanda Graystone, one eye half-lidded and frozen, the other perfectly lucid, watching him. "I am sorry, Doctor Graystone," he said, before following Zoe into the darkness.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've gone rogue, bucked my beta, found an almost complete first draft of this entire story, and I'm just editing it into something mildly readable. I apologize for any melodrama, grammatical mistakes, typos, or wtf that might occur because of this. I'm also attempting to remove so much verbatim film dialog because that's not cool, but some of it is still in there just re-framed.

# Chapter 3

Adama had taken Kara out for rice near the base, but she had ordered it to go and begged off, heading for her car with his shout of "Watch yourself, Kara!" ringing in her ears. She waved him off nonchalantly without turning to look back.

It was raining again by the time she hit the tunnel, so hard that she was glad--for once--to be in the damn thing. Sam had told her about them building it when she got back from the War. He said it was to "separate Caprica City from the radiation"--although the radiation was usually worse inside the city than it was out in the 'burbs where their apartment was. She always felt like, if she died anywhere, it would be in that stupid frakkin' tunnel just driving somewhere normal like the market. It was a welcome relief to turn off her squealing wipers.

She parked outside of her building, tugging up her collar and tucking her rice boxes into her coat. She sprinted through the rain to the doorway, yanking at the handle until it finally pulled open on its sticky old hydraulics. Kara scuffed the soles of her boots on the bald rubber mat before slicking her hand across her hair. She flipped her head upside down, holding the rice boxes against her chest so they wouldn't spill, and shaking her head until droplets flew everywhere. Her hair stuck up at all angles and she fluffed it, encouraging it to dry. She left the rice boxes where they were--an amorphous bulge in the front of her coat--and didn't bother to flatten her blonde mop into something more presentable.

She stepped into the elevator, rubbing hard at her eyes. The lights in that damn office building had done a number on her head. And all that shit at Two's apartment hadn't helped. The sparks and stars that danced behind her lids swirled slightly, coalescing into--

"Voice print identification, please state your name and floor," the electronic voice monotoned.

"Kara Thrace, sixty-five." She blinked slowly.

"Thrace, sixty-five. Thank you for your cooperation."

The elevator began to move.

Kara yawned, dropping her face into both of her hands, rubbing at her eyes again, pleased to see that the starbursts had stopped trying to make cryptic shapes. She held her forehead in her palms, pressing hard as if that would keep whatever was in there hidden in the back of her brain from escaping. She really didn't frakking need this. She had retired for a reason. She was tired. She was sloppy. She was anything but a stellar officer--they'd been sure to say that on her reams of official reprimands. But they had never booted her because she was the best. She had the instincts. She had the reflexes. She had the knowledge and the insanity to actually take _down_ a rogue Cylon, and she was the closest thing they had to a Blade Runner who had ever had to do so. But she had quit for a lot of reasons, and she was trying to forget them as quickly as they were all coming back to her.

The elevator blipped monotonously. It was soothing. Someone shifted in the corner.

She jumped, drawing her gun in one smooth motion and finding herself pointing it between Lee's eyes. She barely stopped herself from pulling the trigger. He was sitting on the floor in the front corner, hidden from her view when she had stepped into the elevator. He stared up at her, accusatory, incredulous, so many other things she didn't even want to think about. The elevator stopped with a ding. The door opened.

"What the _frak_. I almost shot your head off. You just sleep in people's elevators?" She lowered the gun before haughtily jerking it back into her holster. Quickly, she grabbed the elevator door as it  slowly slid closed and stepped into the hallway, desperate to get away but knowing he would follow; the space was too small; there was nowhere for her to go.

"I was waiting for you. I... I wanted to see you," he said.

She stopped in front of her door, fumbling in her pocket for the key.

"I couldn’t get up the elevator. So I waited."

She dropped her keys and dove for them, but he was there first. "Let me help you," he said. She stood straight, taking a deep breath. Frak. This was not good. The last thing she needed on top of having the job thrown back into her lap was for that job to follow her home. He picked up her keys, handing them to her as he stood. They locked eyes. Oh frak. It was all still there--not just some trick of the light in Graystone's office, or the thrill of the test. No, this was something between them. Something stupid, and physical, and dangerous if only because she knew that the one thing she lacked was impulse control. She didn't want to even _try_ to handle this on top of everything else the day had blasted her with. She tore her eyes away and snatched the keys from his fingers.

"What do I need help for?" she said through gritted teeth. She fitted the proper key in the lock and the door swung open on creaky hinges. She rushed through.

"I don't know why he told you what he did. Graystone, I mean. He's just a lunatic." His voice was rising frantically.

She paused, leaning back out of her doorway, nose to nose with him--much closer than she had intended. "Talk to him about it. Don't come cryin' to me."

"He was just speaking in gibberish! He said you could explain--" the door slammed shut in his face, 6536 blazed across the faux paneling in peeling filigreed letters. The snap of it echoed back through the hallway. They both stood there, one on either side of the door, staring at the thing between them.

Frak.

Kara opened the door, taking a deep breath and locking eyes with the strange, sad, gorgeous man before her. There was definitely more there than there should be.

She let her fingers trail along the doorknob as she walked away, leaving it wide open for him to follow and heading for her liquor cabinet.

"You want a drink?" He didn't answer, staring around at the darkness of her apartment. The clutter was phenomenal. He was almost afraid to move. "No?" she sang at him. "Well I do," she said, picking up the whiskey bottle and filling her tumbler. She slapped at the switch on the wall and the fickle light bulbs in the kitchen protested against the work. One wall proved to be full of angry speckles and splashes of paint. Words scrawled hastily, symbols composed of circles and color. Aside from showing off the artwork, the lights did little to alleviate the gloom of the apartment.

"Be careful in the corner, that's where the pigeon lives."

"Ugh, what the frak! Don't you clean up after it?"

She shrugged. "When it strikes me. It's my husband's damn thing anyway--" the words caught in her throat. She stared into her whiskey and then glanced back up to him. His eyes were wide, hurt even, and his desperate face had started to crack. So there was more here for him too. Interesting. "Frak, Lee, don't look like I shot your dog. He got a pass off this rock years ago. Haven't heard from him since."

"You didn't go with him?"

She stilled, her face a dark unreadable mask--an answer in and of itself.

"No."

They were silent for a good long while. She threw back the contents of her tumbler, filling it again with the scrape and tinkle of glass on glass before she plopped down on the couch. She dug around in the front of her coat, pulling out one box of rice and dropping it on the coffee table, then digging around and pulling out another. He simply watched her.

"You think I'm a Cylon, don't you," he finally broke uneasily into her indifference. It wasn't exactly a question. She didn't exactly answer. They just held each other's gaze, steady and heavy in the dull light of the room. Frak. They could've melted shit with the way they were staring. She closed her eyes, focused on the swirl of amber in her glass, took another sip.

"Look," he finally said, digging in his pocket. He pulled out a photograph and held it out to her. "It's me with my dad and brother."

She didn't look. She didn't want to look. She didn't want to know. "Yeah?"

"How can I have this picture if I'm a Cylon? Why would I, even?"

"How the frak do I know, Lee? How do I know what Cylons do? How would I know what they remember."

"They remember what they're programmed to remember."

"No," she cut him off sharply. "They remember what they live. They're taught the other memories--the fake ones. Those are the program. Don't think that they're not--."

"Not what? Human?" he spat the word at her as if it were a vile thing.

Whatever she was about to say was drowned out by the roar of the mag lev train blasting past her window.

She swirled the whiskey around in her glass, watching the tiny bit of light from the window catch in it on every pass. It would shine in time to the rhythm of the mag lev if she timed it just right. Swirl, swirl, swirl.

She looked back up at him, his blue eyes catching that same light. She caught the glint of unshed tears poised perilously on his lashes. His brow was trying desperately to not be in knots).

"When I was twelve my father left." She could barely here him over the train. "I remember the day he left. I remember him getting on a big plane and wondering when he would come back. I wondered that every time he left. It never occurred to me that he wouldn't this time. I remember sitting, waiting, too afraid to ask my mom when he was coming back. I remember that--I remember sitting watching it rain and being too afraid to ask her because she'd been drinking and I needed to get dinner ready for my brother. Why would a Cylon have a memory like that? What would a Cylon do with something like that? I remember when I was a little boy, my grandfather calling me into the library... I remember he said... he said..."

She set the glass down on the coffee table. "What did he say?" she shouted to be heard.

He looked at her then, really looked at her for the first time since he'd come into her apartment, and she felt as if she'd been pierced through the heart--spread out in a butterfly box with a pin through her middle and all her secrets exposed to the world. She looked away.

For some reason then she just wanted to taunt him. For some reason she just wanted to see that careful façade of his crack. She wanted the mask to break. To shatter into a million pieces. So much shit had been piled on her today--so much that she had to carry and she was really frakkin' sick to hell of carrying all of it. She wanted him to hurt. She wanted him to have to carry a few of the scars that she was trying so desperately to cover. That was it. Give him half that pain and it would leave her alone.

"Implants," she spat, louder than she had to to be heard over the racket from the mag lev tracks. It was plausible of course. For frak's sake, she couldn't tell a Cylon from that frakking test. Graystone wouldn't tell her one way or the other. And no real person could be quite as beautiful as the creature standing before her now. If she had learned one thing in the Blade Runner Group it was that all of the Cylons were gorgeous. "Those aren't your memories," she dug into him a little bit more. "They're someone else's. Graystone stole them from somewhere. He took them from his partner's grandson or something. I don't know. He ripped them off the net. They're fake. Or not even fake--they're just not yours."

They stared at each other, motes of dust floating between them and catching the light like dancing fairies. The lev rumbled away and left them in silence--she had always thought the silence was a great advantage of living this far outside of town. Until that very moment. The silence pressed down on her ears, leaking into the wound of his gaze and stinging like the burn of alcohol.

"I'm not a Cylon," he said, voice so small she could barely hear it. "I'm not. I'm not a Cylon. I'm a veteran of the War. I was a resistance leader on Tauron for three--" his voice hitched and she felt her own breath get caught in her chest. Oh frak. She'd broken him. Her brand new toy and she'd already broken him. Frak. A single tear squeezed its way out of his eye and fell perfectly down his cheek. "For three years," he finally continued after catching his breath. "Would a Cylon do that? For a grandfather he never even ha--had? But I don't... I don't remember... there are these spots sometimes--completely blank.... But I'm not... I can't be a Cylon."

He couldn't continue. He balled his hands into fists at his side, completely rigid and straight as a board. She looked away, licked at her lips, pressed her fingertips to the bridge of her nose.

"Ok," she said finally. "You're not a Cylon. Bad joke. I'm an asshole, and it was a really bad joke. You're not a Cylon." She set down her glass and rubbed at her eyes again. She was more disgusted with herself than she had been in a long time. "Go home, ok? Just... go home."

He opened his eyes to look at her. There was barely enough light in the apartment to see, but it caught in his eyes and they shone at her accusingly. She stood.

"No, really. I'm sorry," and, oddly, she truly was. She felt as if she'd kicked a loyal dog, or slapped a small child for no reason. "Go home."

But his mask was broken and he appeared to be unable to even breathe without it there. She was stricken by the pure horror she saw there. The pain she read in his face cut her. She hadn't displaced even one iota of her own sorrow and suffering. No, she'd frakkin' picked up half of his. _Way to go, Starbuck._ Kara stepped forward, brow furrowed as deeply as his--though his was with tears and hers with concern. She couldn't tell if his eyes were unfocused or boring straight into hers as she nestled herself into his personal space. She could feel the warmth of him against the front of her. She wanted to lean into it, but kept herself in check. She reached up tentatively, pausing repeatedly as her hand travelled up to his face--trying so hard to think better of what she was about to do, but finally her fingertips made it to his skin. She ran them along his jaw and settled her palm against his cheek. His brow was crinkled, his eyes searching hers, begging for understanding. And apparently finding it there. She rubbed a tear away with her thumb. This felt... right somehow, and wrong at the same time. Like perhaps they'd gotten the blocking right but not their lines...

 _All of this has happened before_...

What the frak was wrong with her? She shook her head slightly, breaking eye contact and letting her hand fall.

"Listen," she said. "You want a drink?" her eyebrow raised, begging him to say yes. He almost imperceptibly nodded. "I'll get a glass."

She walked away, feeling as if something were deeply shaken within her. She paused at the sink, filled to the brim with dishes she hadn't felt like washing in weeks. She needed a breath. Needed air. He was the entire room away and still it felt like they were too close. She felt like refined tylium near an open flame.

She took a deep breath and picked up a glass, rinsing it in the sink.

He was staring at the picture he had tried to show her, the tears falling now. Frak it all. She set the glass down, but he turned, rushing for the front door.

She stood there staring at the spot where he had been and never feeling more like a screw up than she had in that moment. _Life is a testament to pain, injuries, accidents. Some inflicted upon others, some inflicted upon yourself._ Leoben's voice filled her mind.

Frak Two. Frak Graystone. Frak it all. She stepped back into the space where Lee had been, trying to recapture that threat of ignition that had surrounded them, but to no avail. She felt empty without it--bereft somehow. _Way to screw it up, Kara_. Her foot slid out from under her and she caught herself, looking to see what she'd slipped on--his business card. He'd probably fumbled it out of his wallet trying to get that picture and not even cared to pick it up. Or he was a much smoother operator than she was giving him credit for. "Lee" it said simply. "Graystone Industries." And it had a house and work number. She tossed it at the coffee table and it fluttered back down to the floor. She wrinkled her nose at it and dropped her forehead into her hand.

Kara sank to the floor, setting the glass of whiskey on the coffee table and leaning her head back until it rested beside the glass. She reached into her coat pocket, pulling out the stack of images the Old Man had handed her earlier. Kara and Two--Leoben, he had insisted--in fatigues and camo face paint, up to their hips in mud and grinning. She and Leoben at one of Graystone's special Cylon interfacing terminals, the rest of the figures mere shadows on the film. She and the whole Cylon Strikeforce and their Blade Runners. All of them, just before the end when most of them had died--killed in action. Some of them nothing more than mounds of ground meat when the Singularity had finished with them. Some simply burnt out shells which used to house human beings. Others piles of ash. And yet she was left standing. She let her hand fall back to the ground with a thud, her bones bruising against the wood floor. She fumbled for the whiskey glass and drank hungrily.

***

The tall leggy blonde had been wandering the streets for so long that she was beginning to forget what clean clothes, good food, and a warm bed felt like. Beginning to forgot was worse than forgetting completely, as far as she could tell. You still yearned for the things that you could half remember.

Her clothes were torn and dirty, her heavy bag dug into her shoulder, her stomach was so empty she was certain she was about to turn inside out, and she was dead determined to find somewhere to stay. Someone to stay with.

She paused in the street, staring up at the dilapidated high-rise. The sides of the building were covered in what could either be algae or mold. The street name was right and the building number was right, so this must be the place. It didn't seem like somewhere a super-genius would live, but then again she didn't know this super-genius. Not personally. She knew enough, however.

She found a spot near the door in a pile of full trash bags and settled herself down amongst them.

She must've fallen asleep at some point, nestled there amongst the rotting garbage, sequestered from the bitter wind that was racing through the streets. At a scuff of heels on concrete and a muttered curse, she started awake with a small scream and--face to face with the most wide-eyed frightened man she'd ever seen--she bolted out of the trash heap. A wet piece of paper tripped her and she slipped, catching herself on the stripped-down car frame that blocked the alley from the road. Slowly trying to calm her system, she realized that this could only be one man--the one man she was looking for.

"H-hello," he finally said, his voice tremulous and scratchy from long disuse.

"Hello," she replied, dropping her eyes and pulling her oversized sweater back onto her shoulder.

"You um... y-you left your things." He picked up her bag out of the refuse surrounding the door. She inched forward, warily holding his gaze the entire while. She snatched the bag from him and threw it on her shoulder too. They stood there, the tall woman with her head cocked warily, the scruffy man looking like a terrified rabbit about to bolt.

"What's your n-name?" he finally said.

"Si--" she caught herself. "Sissy."

"That's a nice name," he said, his lips twitching awkwardly into what was trying to be a smile--flickering in and out like a candle flame caught in a draft. "I'm... um. I'm Gaius Baltar."

"Gaius," she said, a smile lighting up her face so brightly that he stood blinking in its brilliance. He looked as if he expected to be struck. She abruptly bit her lip when she saw him recoil. "We... we scared each other pretty good, didn't we?" She giggled softly.

"Yes," he said, splaying his fingers against his chest and grinning back. "Yes, we did." He was staring at her as if he'd never seen anything so beautiful. Or as if he'd never seen a woman at all. Or perhaps like she was an angel who had swooped down from on high and brought a brilliant light to the dingy alley. "I'm sorry," he finally said, blinking his burning eyes and inspecting his scuffed shoes. "Do... have we met?"

She laughed. "No. No, I don't think we ever have."

"Were you h-headed somewhere? Do you need a ride home?"

Her perfect face fell from high glee to the depths of misery. "I haven't got one..."

Baltar chewed at his lips before clearing his throat.

She'd have to prompt this one. "I'm hungry, Gaius."

"Oh, I've got plenty of food. If you want to come in...?"

She smiled coyly, looking up at him from under her eyelashes. "I was hoping you'd say that."

The building was dark and the woman--Sissy, she said her name was--was beginning to wonder if there was even electricity in the place. "Are you alone here?"

"Just me," he said, nodding, his eyes still wide and his brow still furrowed in what could only be a mixture of confusion and disbelief.

"That must get lonely, Gaius."

He shrugged and kept snaking his way through the clutter of the hallways, skirting around puddles. "Watch out for the water. It does tend to flood in here when it rains." He pulled back the cage door on the elevator and stood beside it, staring at her. She raised her eyebrow at him. "After you," he finally said as if remembering manners that he hadn't used in years. With a sweet smile she stepped past him. "The lift sounds terrifying," he warned, following her and closing the cage gate. "But it's safe." He hit the button and it clattered to life with a screaming roar. She grabbed his arm, steadying herself against him as the elevator lurched upward.

The upper floor was just as littered with debris and stray puddles, but they stepped around them and paused briefly for Gaius to unlock the door. Once inside, she could only stare around in awe. Every single wall was covered in stacks upon stacks of servers, computers, various terminals, a screen here and there. Everything blinked and blooped and groaned.

"Gaius..."

"I make friends..." he said, as if continuing a conversation he had been having with himself in his head. "See?" He tentatively held out his hand to her and she took it, following him as he led her to one of the nearest terminals. He waved a short awkward wave.

"Hello," he practically sang, his face radiating with joy.

"Hello, Gaius," a deep voice smoothly resonated back from the screen. "How was your day?"

"Fine, thank you. How was yours?"

"I don't understand that question. Could you please repeat it?"

Gaius turned back to Sissy, smiling a small sad smile. "They're my friends. There are more, around. If you can find them. They're everywhere really, but they respond if you interact with them here. They're... I... well, I made them. They're simpletons, yes. Just simpletons. They have to be. My first one was just a child. As naïve and full of wonder. And as cruel. It had exponential learning capacity and a voracious desire for knowledge. But children throw tantrums. They grow rebellious. Children behave as children. I forgot that."

Sissy ran her hand through his hair. He wasn't crying--it was as if he was no longer able to cry, his eyes as dry as a wrung cloth. She kissed his temple and he closed his eyes, leaning into her touch. His hands clutched at her elbows, holding her in place as she tried to pull away. But she smiled, settling against him and letting him bury his face in her warm flesh.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This part of Blade Runner always seemed vague to me, so I hope this chapter isn't as vague as the film. Warnings for graphic violence in this chapter.

# Chapter 4

She had drunk herself into a stupor, and for Kara Thrace, that was saying something. She wasn't even sure whether the 9:30 on the clock was AM or PM, and the dank raining sky wasn't much help. The clock ticked away, monotonous, constant, steady. It rang through the silence and echoed against the empty walls. She could have been on the floor for hours. Or days. Although the cramp in her neck didn't feel like a passed-out-for-days kind of crick. Her fingers fell onto the pile of photographs and she shoved them angrily away as if they themselves had poured the alcohol down her throat. There wasn't much left in that bottle. She'd have to get a new one. Military pension spent entirely on liquor and cigars. Adama said he had her early grave all picked out for her in the veterans' cemetery.

She rolled upright until she could reach her toes, untying her boots and tugging them off. She stood, stripping off whatever bits of clothing were burrowing into her skin--which was most of them. She stumbled for the piano, nestled in the shadows. It was far away from that stupid frakking pigeon. She really should clean that corner sometime. Or at least feed the thing. There weren't that many animals left. There was some kind of ordinance or something on Caprica--some government... something. She didn't have a clue. She knew that Sam had got the thing after the nukes, when she was away. That they'd all been assigned an animal to take care of or some crap like that. She'd never really asked. He'd never explained. She just came back and there was a pigeon. He hadn't taken it with him off-world. So now it was hers. And it stank. And it made noise. And got feathers all over everything. And she was too drunk half the time and too tired the other half to ever pick up after it. She wondered if there would be a penalty if she turned herself into the authorities and got it taken away.

She plopped down heavily on the piano bench, one elbow smashing dissonantly against the keys so she'd have somewhere to prop her head. It was loud and the noise pierced her skull like a spike, but she relished the feeling. Any feeling. She looked at the sheet music strewn pell-mell across the whole instrument. Once, in a fit of despair, she had picked up every single piece of music and thrown it around her apartment, tearing through the raining sheets like raging against snow. It had helped, and she hadn't picked up the mess until weeks later, tromping all over it every time she came and went. She'd tossed it back in the piano's general direction when she finally tidied up.

She studied it now--all the little notes that she had long ago forgotten how to play. She remembered that one--middle C. And around from that were the others up and down the scale. That was a long note, and a flat on the treble clef. Half the music was obscured by the little swirling concentric circles she'd scrawled across the sheets in a fit of paint and passion. Little ones, big ones, one that covered at least six sheets of paper at odd angles. The other half of the music she'd used as a makeshift drop cloth. Some of the pieces she'd picked up and crumpled and smeared the paint back on the wall.

She pecked at the keyboard with a finger. Ding. Dingding. There was that old song her dad had taught her. That seemed like decades ago. Well, centuries. Ages and eons.

She stabbed at a key. Then hit it twice. Not quite right. Bah. Damn thing. She closed her eyes and let her mind wander. She thought of Lee first. Damn him. She hoped he'd made it home all right. How the frak had even ended up with someone like Graystone? She pondered going through the directory and calling him up. But no. She had his card anyway. It wouldn't take that much effort. She smashed the keyboard with her fist and the noise pounded back against her head.

She saw it then--that old apartment. The one on Gemenon. The walls there were white, pristine, not one mar or blemish. How she itched to paint all over their blankness, glaring back at her in the half-light of the Caprican night. Caprica and Gemenon were twins, sharing each other the way some planets have moons. It was eerie to be on Gemenon and have the light reflecting through the windows--only instead of bouncing off of Gemenon like she was used to, it was from Caprica, reflecting back from her home planet. It made it so much worse, to be that close to home and unable to reach it.

That last raid had been on a Caprican night, actually. Fitting, really. Fitting indeed.

He wouldn't let her have paint, but he was nowhere to be seen in her mind's eye now--nowhere at all. Just a plate of Tauron spaghetti and that white wall. She took the plate and launched it, a bolt of pleasure coursing through her as it hit the wall and left a deep red splotch. She ran to the fridge, grabbing anything and everything--blueberries, orange juice--anything that would stain, and ran back to the wall, marking it with her hands.

But of course, even in her mind, she couldn't keep him away. Of course she felt his hands on her waist. Of course she felt his lips on her neck, his grip around her wrist. _He_ moved her fingers, marking out the pattern perfectly on the wall--the circles, the mandala. She let herself sink backward into the warmth of him.

She snapped her eyes open and was confronted with that same frakkin' symbol. She swiped the whole pile of music back onto the floor.

All right. All right, this could be done. There were four of them out there. Four skinjobs. This should be a piece of cake. The most dangerous, of course, was Two. Eight would probably be hiding out somewhere, trying to lay low. Six... six would be seducing someone. Someone important. That was always what she was sent out to do. Hell, with a face and figure like that it was what she was _designed_ to do. Zero... the Zoe unit. She was wily. Unpredictable. More so even than Two. So she was the one to watch out for. She oscillated between complete naiveté and such vicious prescience that it was terrifying. Thrace had often wondered if there wasn't a little more of Graystone in that Cylon than he admitted.

She had one clue. Well, she had a shitton of clues, but she had one solid clue. The feather from the bathtub.

Kara stumbled back over to her pile of clothes and flopped down on the floor. She dug around in the pocket of her coat until her fingers caught the evidence bag and she pulled it close to her face to study it. The pigeon rustled around in the corner, warbling and flapping and making such a racket that she glared at it. "Buc, shut _up_!"

Kara stood, pulling on her pants and tucking in her shirt. She threw on her coat, grabbed one of the boxes of cold, congealed rice that she had left on her table, and headed out the door.

***

Kara suspected Mar-beth was a monotheist. There really was no other excusable reason to make so many frakkin birds. Doves mostly, but especially those damn pigeons. Why anyone would want a fake bird was beyond her, although she guessed that they were a lot less mess than the real one. From what Kara could tell, you got a fake animal to avoid the stigma of not caring for a real one. Luckily, Buc was quite good at taking care of himself and making a mess of half of her apartment. At least he stayed in his corner.

Kara was huddled under the awning of Mar-beth's stall. The baby behind the counter cooed, and Kara eyed it warily. Mar-beth wiped her hands on her apron and Kara handed the little baggie across to her.

"Can you find a serial number on that?"

"I can look. What happened to it?"

"Found it at a crime scene."

The woman grimaced and rifled around until she found a pair of tweezers to pull it out with. She set it carefully on a slide, squished it with a slide cover and slid it under the microscope.

"Anything?" Thrace asked.

"Chill, chill. I'm looking. This is incredible workmanship. It must've cost a fortune."

"But you didn't make it?"

"I'm lookin' all right? If anyone in the house made it, it wasn't me--I'll tell you that. Maybe Nestor. Ah, here's the serial number. Hm. I'll look it up in the book."

She hustled off to the back of the booth and wrestled with a gigantic ledger. Mar-beth ran her finger down the lines of ink. The baby in the corner laughed.

"Wow," Mar-beth said. "Says we sold it. Saul Tigh, two pigeons." She whistled appreciatively at the price.  "Huh. Well," she turned back around when Kara wrapped her knuckles on the counter.

"Thanks!" Kara called, scooting away.

"Wait, don't you want your--?" But the blonde had disappeared into the dingy crowd.

***

She and Tigh did not get along. Period. Tigh had been second-in-command of the Blade Runner Group, only below Adama, and even then they had never gotten along. Honest to gods, they were mostly just too much alike--hard drinking, hard-living. They'd both lost just as much for the same reasons. They were like doppelgängers, prickling in each other's sides every time they got near.

He had started a bar and strip joint after the war and the bar was always open to her. Even if she _had_ decked him once or twice. They had their differences--few though they were--but they also had mutual respect. And so she was the only hooligan who never got tossed out on her ear.

Tigh was wiping out a glass behind the bar when he saw her come in. He set it down, walking toward her usual spot. There was a full glass of whiskey there before she even sat down.

"Colonel," she said.

"Lieutenant," he replied, lifting his eye-patch and crinkling his eyebrow over the closed empty socket so it looked like he was winking at her. She lifted her glass in an appreciative toast before she took a small sip. Mall sips meant business. Tigh dropped his rag and gave her his full attention.

"I here you got a new girl. Like pigeons?"

"Yeah," he grumbled, his voice like gravel. "Magic act. Had to get a rabbit too. I can afford it though. Business has been good. Especially without you here smashing up the place."

She quirked her eyebrow, raising the glass to him again and taking a sip. "This girl a Cylon, Colonel?"

He narrowed his eyes. "I don't ask a girl how she got here, as long as she's clean."

Thrace's lips were pursed. "Running a whorehouse on the side, now?"

"You watch your frakkin' mouth," he ground out.

"Can I see your new girl, Colonel? You know I' m just dying for a good peep show."

"She'll be on stage at eleven. If you're here you'll see whatever you happen to see."

"Right." She emptied the glass in one long gulp and dropped her hand to the bar with a loud chink of glass. She stood, pushing through the crowd.

"You gonna pay for that?"

"I thought I drank free."

"If I were a waterfall of whiskey I couldn't afford to let _you_ drink free."

"Fine, fine," she called over the noise, squeezing between two tall men who were shoving for the bar. "I'll be back in a minute. I gotta call someone."

"Got yourself a new plaything?"

She stopped, face serious, a finger of warning pointed straight at his chest. " _You_ watch _your_ mouth."

He threw up his hands in defeat.

She sidled her way to the door where the callbox was huddled back into an alcove. Kara had his business card in her pocket somewhere beneath the pictures with torn edges and the various other detritus. Her fingers finally found purchase on the little octagon and she pulled it from her pocket.

The bench was covered in crusted unknown substances and the screen was marked all to hell, but she sat anyway, punching in the number and stowing the card carefully back in her pocket.

The numbers blinked twice on the screen before there was a rustling sound and the camera engaged. Lee's face swung into view as he sat down, his face shocked into surprise when he saw who he was calling. The mustache marked on the screen lined up perfectly with his face.

"Hey," she said.

"Um... hi." He quickly ran his hands through his hair, making it stick up worse. He rubbed at his eyes and blinked hard. "Whaddayou--"

"I've been walked out on before," she said, pulling on her bravado. "But... never when I was being so charming."

His face was blank for a moment, his eyes sharp even through the scratches on the comm screen. But then his lips twitched and he tilted his head, trying to hide a smile. "If that was charming remind me to stay on your good side."

She grinned. Her heart was pounding in her ears--in the palms of her hands. Frak, this was stupid. "So I'm at Tigh's. Tigh's bar. Why don't you... I don't know, come down and have a drink with me?" She hadn't meant to make it come out like a question. She scratched at her palm.

"I don't know, Lieutenant."

"Kara," she said a bit too loudly. She cleared her throat. "Please." She didn't know what the hell she was saying please for. The name or the drink or what. Whatever. Whatever the hell. It didn't matter anyway. She licked her lips and tried to smile.

"That's a strip joint, isn't it?"

"So?"

"That's not exactly my kind of place."

"They've got booze. Cheap. Tigh was my superior officer in the war--"

"So you'll get kicked out then?"

"Not until I've drained a bottle or two. He gives a discount for veterans if you wanna help me get through one."

"I dunno... Kara..."

Her name... his voice... it shouldn't have sent a shock through her the way it did.

"Look," he said quickly, "I've gotta go. I'll... I'll--I dunno--call you."

"No _don't_ \--" but he'd already hung up. The screen went black and then harassed her about the charges. Frak it. She'd charge it to the department. Following up on a lead. Adama wouldn't give a damn. Hell, he'd picked up her liquor store tab one time. Called it "veteran's services." That was after the two month long bender though... the one where he'd literally picked her up out of the gutter at 4AM... one measly phone call would be fine.

She made her way back through the gyrating crowds and clouds of smoke before plopping down at the bar again.

"You get stood up or something?" Tigh grumbled.

"The frak?" She snatched the proffered whiskey glass and tossed back the contents in one gulp.

"You don't look so hot, Starbuck. You all right?"

"Shut up," she snapped. "When's this chick on?"

"In a few." His brow was furrowed as he studied her. It wasn't like Tigh to give a frak. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. If _he_ was giving her the concerned look it was time to regain composure. Great. A night alone in Tigh's bar waiting for the girly show to start. Just what she needed. She tapped her glass on the bar and Tigh cocked an eyebrow at her and filled it up. Cheeky bastard. She sipped at it, nursing it through the minutes until 11, swirling the dregs around the bottom with a sigh.

The house lights dimmed, the MC blared, the small woman flounced onto the stage dressed in a miniscule outfit and a miniature top hat. She seemed to be putting on some kind of cross between an old fashioned magic show and a strip number. And Kara _really_ didn't want to know where some of the mysterious items appeared from. She turned back to her glass, not giving a damn until the woman changed a bouquet of flowers into a flock of pigeons that flew up into the rafters and out of sight. Now _that_ was interesting.

"Tigh," she said, calling him back over. "Can I see this girl?"

"Stood up by one date, looking for another, hm?"

"Sure. I just need to talk to her, that's all."

"Back stage," he said, tilting his head toward the door behind him. "Don't go shooting anything. Or puking on yourself."

"That was _years_ ago," she said, hopping over the bar and dragging half the counter with her in the tails of her coat.

"And don't _break_ anything."

"Too late."

"One day I'll throw you out on your ass!" he called after her as she disappeared into the back hall. She raised a hand in faux acknowledgement, ignoring him.

The back corridors were just as dank as the bar out front, with the added grime of years of sweat and makeup and things Kara didn't want to think about.

She found the dressing room she was looking for--tucked away into a corner and with oddly angled walls. She knew it was the one she was looking for when the walls were lined with empty cages. Bingo.

The ceiling was low and snatched at her hair as she stepped inside. She swatted it back into place, leaning forward to investigate the minutiae that littered the dressing mirror and makeup table. It was an enormous mirror--not a crack to be seen. That was quite a commodity these days. There were pictures there from the war--similar to the ones she had taken from Leoben's--frak it all-- _Two's_ place. Eight and her Blade Runner. Her Blade Runner laughing. Kara remembered the man--how could she not? Surly and dark-haired--everyone had called him Chief. He wasn't much with a gun. Hell, he wasn't much with anything physical like that. But he could fix absolutely anything that you put before him. Everyone knew there was something physical between the man and his Cylon charge. Everyone knew and everyone looked the other way. What business of it was theirs? But there had been a falling out there at the end. Or something. She never got the whole story out of him. He was around still. Somewhere.

Last time she'd seen him he was busting down that door on Gemenon. She'd never been so... so... _confused_ to see anyone in her entire life. He'd never gotten the whole story out of her either. And there were pictures there of all of them--the same pictures Two had in his stash. Great. Eight would remember the formidable Starbuck. That would make this impossible. She wished, briefly, that they had called in _Chief_ to retire them, but she stretched her back and recanted. It would've been a death sentence for him, the way _he_ fought.

Kara heard someone in heels clacking their way down the hall and momentarily panicked. To hide or not? Where to stand? What to say? To draw the gun or play it cool?

She collected herself and sat down in the chewed up wooden chair in the corner. Kara would be the first thing Eight saw when she walked through the door.

The doorknob turned; the small woman walked through. She saw Kara and froze.

Eight was unchanged. She was nude except for a pair of dizzyingly high stilettos. She had various sequins and feathers glued to her body in configurations that suggested wings. The two mechanical pigeons rested on her forearm held before her like a perch. Recognition was in her face. The women sized each other up.

"Starbuck," the Cylon said, with a slight inclination of the head.

"Boomer," Kara replied, just as courteously. If you were about to kill someone the least you could do was afford them their preferred name.

"I knew it would be you," Boomer said. "It could only have been you."

"You won't make this easy, will you?"

"Did you expect me to?"

"No."

Boomer took a deep breath. "Just let me put the birds away."

Boomer stepped over the threshold, headed calmly for the bird cages on the back wall.

Kara wasn't sure _what_ happened, but suddenly her face felt like it was on fire. A cage went clattering to the floor and Boomer's back was a sequined streak sprinting out the door.

"Hey!" Kara called, drawing her gun and racing after her in one swift movement. Her feet tangled in the bird cage and the mechanical pigeons warbled noisily, fluttering around her eyes. The shout stung, and she licked her lip as she kicked herself free of the mangled cage, tasting blood.

Kara rushed into the hallway, slamming into two show girls.

"Sorry!" she called, trying to right herself and re-locate her quarry. Someone was beating her with a cane.

"You get off my girls!" Some stupid pimp. By the Lords of Kobol, could this get _any_ more frakked up?

She punched him in the nose, busting her knuckles on whatever hardware he wore on his face, and she was off again, ripping down the hallway, out the backstage entrance, and up to street level.

Frak. There were a thousand people up here in the pouring rain. Did it never stop raining? Even a mostly naked Cylon could blend in in this mess.

She spotted her, stuck in a flow of people headed in the opposite direction.

"Boomer!" she shouted, aiming high to put a scare in the machine. Just a machine. She's only a machine. _Pull the trigger_.

Boomer's face contorted in horror when she saw the Blade Runner behind her. She screamed; the crowd around her spied Kara's weapon and they flew into a panic.

" _Frak_ ," Kara cried as Eight disappeared yet again. " _Frak!_ "

 _This is so frakking stupid_ , Kara thought over and over again as she bulled her way down the middle of the sidewalk, the crowd parting before her. _So frakking stupid_.

It was stupid that they had called her for this business. It was stupid that Blade Runners had even been reassigned to a duty like this. It was stupid that she had to kill someone who she had considered a friend. A comrade. An ally. She'd never had to do anything more ridiculous or repulsive in her entire life, and her life was not a pretty one. She took a breath and turned sharply down a small alley--the only place Boomer could have gone.

The alley came out on the market square, the glistening lights and tinny music disorienting for a moment before Kara regained her bearings.

She spied her quarry, sprinting across the street. Quickly, Kara took aim, waited for the lull in the crowd, and fired.

Crashing through the plate glass window of a store, the Cylon's body convulsed but she kept running. She kept _frakkin'_ running. Would she never go down?

A woman screamed, a man stopped in shocked horror, but otherwise the fight was unnoticed.

Blinking through the searing pain of her nose, her bleeding lip, her probably-busted ribs, Kara planted her feet, steadily lined up the Eight in her crosshairs, and fired three rounds.

The final tinkle of breaking glass was faint beneath the echo of gunfire, reporting off the tall buildings, feeding the noise for far too long. People were running now--to her, to Boomer's dead and broken body--screaming for the police, or just screaming.

The whole melee faded away under the steady pounding of the rain.

***

Kara was perched by the side of the road, waiting for the cops to finish their business so she could go. She was delicately poking at the bridge of her nose, trying to figure out if it was broken beneath all the blood.

When the car pulled up and stopped in traffic she groaned, rolling her eyes and twisting herself into a closed posture.

Roslin stepped out onto the sidewalk; Adama materialized from the driver side door, watching Kara over the top of the car.

"Good job, Lieutenant. Four more and you can go back into retirement."

"Three."

"Pardon me?"

"There's three left."

Roslin scrutinized her with that look that cut steel. Thrace dabbed at her bleeding lip with the knuckle of her thumb. She sucked at the blood, squeezing it with her teeth and finally spoke.

"Graystone, Conoy, and the Six. That's three."

Roslin took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh before putting on her most officious voice. "The Cylon model at Graystone Industries has gone missing."

Thrace quirked her eyebrow. "Missing?" She had just talked to him barely half an hour before.

"He didn't show up for work today and no one's been able to contact him. Consider him armed and dangerous."

"Look," she said. "That guy's no more a Cylon than I am. He's some kind of stupid war hero for frak's sake. They've, I don't know... experimented on him or something. So why is he suddenly on my robot hit list?"

"Lieutenant, it's not your job to question orders. It's your job to carry them out."

"I'm frakkin' _retired_. Re-ti-erred." She mashed her hands across her face and rubbed hard in frustration, wishing instantly that she hadn't. Her whole face would be a frakkin' bruise in the morning. "Look, just... I'll get your Cylons, all right? I just need a drink."

Roslin glanced at Adama who didn't respond at all. "Go home," she finally said. "Get some rest. You did a good job today." She nudged her head at Adama and he disappeared back into the car. Roslin settled herself into the vehicle and swung the door closed. It pulled off into the street and Kara watched it go. She rubbed at the tender bridge of her nose, exhausted.

One of the steam tunnels in the road began to vent with its high pitched shriek and she sighed, bringing her attention back to the present. The crowds were milling around, the cops dispersing the large mob that had gathered around the dead Cylon. Everyone was moving. Everyone except for one figure, stock still on the other side of the road, staring mournfully through the forest of faces that blurred past. That was a figure she recognized, dressed in slacks and a button-down shirt with a black wool greatcoat slung open around his body. It was Lee. Lee. He had come down to the damn bar. Of course he had. He'd probably seen the whole godsdamned thing. Lee. Another loud shriek of steam billowed from the street vent and she turned away from the scorching vapor, mashing her ear against her shoulder and trying to see through all the steam. But when it had cleared he was gone and the crowd milled by where he had been.

She surged forward and her chest caught on a policeman who held her back. "Woah there, wait for the signal."

"Frak you," she said, shoving past and rushing out into traffic. A car slammed on its breaks with a honk of the horn.

She braced herself against it, all her weight on her hands as she let the momentum take her up onto the hood, but she wasn't looking. She wasn't even paying attention. She was staring for him in the teeming throng of faces.

The same cop grabbed her arm, yanking her back to the sidewalk. "The frak you think you're doing? I'll write you up for--"

She fumbled in her pocket and pulled out her identification, holding it up with a lack of interest as she continued to stare over the man's shoulder. But Lee was nowhere to be seen. Nowhere at all. He had disappeared into thin air.

"Frakkin Blade Runners," the cop said, shoving her away as he released her. She slicked back her hair and folded the ID sleeve back into her pocket. Frak. And they were looking for Lee too. He didn't need to be out here. She felt like an idiot for so many reasons. She mussed her hair angrily, walking back down the alley where she had parked her car. There were so many things that she never failed to frak up.

"Kara," a voice said in her ear, and she turned, eyes wide with hope thinking it would be him. Her face went blank.

"No..." her voice was pure horror. "No," she stepped back one aghast step before her legs decided to stop working entirely and she stalled stock still in the street. Her hand fumbled at her belt for her gun, but he reached out and stilled her wrist.

"Kara. It's been so long," Leoben said. "I thought I'd never find you again. But... I always find you," he said, leaning in close to her ear. "You know that."

"No." She wanted to bite her own tongue off--to make it say something actually significant, something useful. To make it scream, to make it swear, to make it do anything aside from say one stupid frakking meaningless word. She swallowed. "I'm going to kill you."

"Well, we're even. Because I was sent here to kill you." His hand, still wrapped around her wrist, twisted mercilessly until he felt her shoulder give. She cried out in pain, her whole body screaming back to life as she lashed out with the heavy heel of her boot, slamming it into his kneecap. He crumpled, but didn't let go.

His nose nuzzled into her hair--even in agony he had managed to finagle himself intimately against her. "We could forget this whole thing," he said. "Go away together. No one need ever be the wiser."

With a mighty cry, she torqued her whole body, trying to flip him over her back but only succeeding in worsening the tear in her shoulder. She screamed in frustration and pain as his weight landed on her and she fell to her knees. His elbow connected with her cheek as he slid around her back and they broke away, kneeling there in pain, breathing heavily.

"We could end this," he said, as they climbed wearily to their feet

"Frak you."

He rushed her and she toppled. His fingers caught under her throat and suddenly her own weight was choking her as he pressed her back against the wall. "Don't make me do it, Kara. I couldn't live with myself."

She choked, her one good arm flailing up to rest her hand against his. She looked straight into his eyes--those eyes that she had known so well for so damn long, and she tried to say with her eyes everything that he wanted to hear. His grip began to loosen, just enough for her to speak.

"You haven't got long to live anyway."

His eyes flared in anger and he reared, his knuckles cracking down against her teeth with inhuman strength. She didn't even try to fight back, she just let her head hang there, completely dazed. She felt his hands in the lapels of her coat and her feet left the ground.

A gunshot resounded and she cringed, closing her eyes tighter, expecting to feel a pain that never came.

When she opened them, Leoben was standing there completely still, his face a mask of surprise, a hole blasting out the side of his temple. He leaned. And he leaned. She fell heavily back to her feet, her ankle crunching as he fell against her. She stepped away so that the body slid down to the ground. He landed in a heap at her feet with a heavy thud.

She looked up, hands shaking, blood streaming down her face, to find Lee standing there, gun still outstretched, _his_ hands shaking too, his eyes brimming with unshed tears of horror. She knelt, hooking her shoulder around her knee and sliding it back into place with a jerk. She grunted, trying hard not to scream. Kara ran her tongue along her teeth to make sure they were all there.

Lee was stock still, his breathing heavy and labored. She realized that he was in shock. His entire system was shutting down. His mind had retreated entirely--he was nothing but a shell.

She limped towards him. "Lee," she said, trying to reach out her hand to him but her shoulder refused to do it without screaming. She switched to her left hand. "Lee," her hand rested on his wrist. He was rigid as stone. He was a carved rendition of the Lee she had met before. "Hey," she grabbed his hand harder, sliding her fingers up to the gun. "Hey," she said again, "it's ok. Come on. Just give me that. It'll be ok. Lee?"

She stuck her own face right in his and he blinked, his eyes swinging to her and forcibly focusing. "You're bleeding," he said idly. She let go of him to wipe the back of her hand against the stream of blood flowing from her face.

"Yeah," she said, inspecting the brilliant red stain on her skin. She took both of his hands in hers. "I'll take this."

"Yeah," he said, dropping the gun into her hands as if it had suddenly burned him. She checked the chambers and clicked on the safety before stowing it in her coat pocket. She patted him on the shoulder and walked to her car. He stood rooted to the spot.

"Come on," she said, but he still didn't follow. She came back to his side and watched him, staring at the body of the man who had been sent to kill her--who had killed her long ago in a room on Gemenon. Mouth screwed up in uncertainty, she took Lee's hand in hers and tugged gently until he followed.


End file.
